Pulling for Phoenix

Caught the movie Taken this weekend and watched a 56-year old (at the time) Liam Neeson practice the fine art of badassery. If you haven’t seen the movie, I wholly recommend it, if just for enjoyment of watching Neeson basically play a middle-aged Jason Borne. Well, done, my good man. Well done. (as an aside, I have extraordinary beef with the daughter in this role… she plays a 17-year old like she’s a 10-year-old by running everywhere, you’ll see, but whatever) Obviously movies are fantasy and can make anyone look insanely tough. I remember Eddie Murphy talking about the magic of movies when he said, in Raw: “You put me in a movie where I’m the star, I’ll kick your a**.”

Here’s the trailer:

I’m talking about Neeson because I saw a similar performance out of Steve Nash on Sunday night. After getting blasted in the eye by Tim Duncan’s elbow in the third quarter, Nash had to get six stitches and then returned. Stitches (ain’t s*** but hos and tricks…) are one thing, but Nash’s right eye was completely swollen shut. Nash needed a cut man, but instead of calling the fight, as it were, Nash went out and scored 10 points and served up 5 assists in the fourth quarter. He hit jumpers and floaters and was ridiculous. Nash is an aging superstar doing things that he should not be able to do even when healthy, and certainly shouldn’t be able to do playing point guard with one eye. Neeson should not be able to lay waste to a bunch of dudes out to do him harm, and neither should Nash, but there they are, bucking the odds and looking entirely convincing doing it. Impressive stuff from two Commonwealth fellows.

Now, about those Suns… for the remaining five or ten of you who care about the NBA how could you not be rooting for them the rest of the way? Anyone who is not a Laker fan should be pulling for the Suns to take them out in the Western Conference Finals. They should also be pulling for Utah to extend their series with L.A., although rooting for Utah feels like rooting for rain. Utah will forever be unpleasant for me because my height of NBA fandom stretched from ’90-’97 (aka, the Golden Years … I’m too young to remember anything to do with 1979) and Utah was constantly in the mix with their terrible uniforms (which have improved dramatically over the years, complete with new designs and colors, even if they have the most ironic name for any NBA team in history: coincidently competing with the L.A. Lakers for this honor… of course, since both teams relocated), with Stockton’s incessant cheating (on more than one occasion I saw him rise for a layup, realize that he had no chance, grab his defender around the shoulder in mid air and pull him to the ground, and get the foul called against the defender… good lord I hated John Stockton), Malone’s elbows and weak fadeaways, Jeff Hornacek wiping his face, (third guy up)

So I couldn’t stand Utah and I guess I still can’t, but I don’t with the same malice toward the team or the town since I have no team to call my own. But rooting for Utah to extend a series, is not quite the same as rooting for them to win, especially if it comes at the expense of the Lakers. I think we (non-Lakers fans) can all agree on that.

Perhaps another reason that I’ll root for the Nash-Run Suns (2004-Present) is that they actually remind me of the 92-97 era Sonics–always good, but never great. Both teams, for six years, were on the precipice of greatness, but ran into buzzsaws along the way (Hakeem and Robert Pack during the non-Jordan years and Chicago for Seattle; San Antonio for Phoenix), which kept them from it. (and no, I am not forgetting about the ’93 Western Conference Finals which Seattle lost to Phoenix in seven games, wherein Phoenix shot 64 free throws… SIXTY FOUR… compared to Seattle’s 36… Barkley alone shot 22). Just for fun, the Sonics during that six-year stretch won an average of 59.5 games per season, the Suns during their current six-year stretch won an average of 55.3 games per season. The Sonics made it to the Finals once and lost to Chicago in six, they made it to the Western Conference Finals one other time (the Suns series); the Suns have not made it to the finals (yet) in their six-year stretch and made it to the Western Conference Finals twice.

It’s also impossible for me to root against Steve Nash because he embodies nearly everything I’d want a point guard to be, the one element he’s missing is the Glove’s tenacious D, but Nash makes up for it in every single other aspect of his game. Also, how can you not root for Grant Hill? Despite the fact that he went to Duke, the guy has had such amazingly bad luck in his career (the cascade of contract money notwithstanding) and has rallied, and is now playing great basketball as a highly effective role player. (I’ll dive into the Grant Hill/Duke analysis at a later date). I even like their coach, Alvin Gentry and the various other players on their team. I can’t say that I love Amare Stoudamire, but it is nice to see Shawn Kemp reincarnated. Incidentally, while a better player who has not pissed (or ate/snorted) his career away, Stoudamire will never be as filthy as Kemp was in his heyday. To wit (the dunks are insane, but that block at 2:47 makes me weepy):

Sigh. I will never, ever forgive Wally Walker. Where was Sam Presti back in the 90s? Oh yeah, he was in college.

Here’s Amare… (No contest. None. Amare, go get your shinebox…).

Above the individual storylines and parallels to a Sonics team that I enjoyed watching, Phoenix plays an extremely watchable style of basketball. Even if you hate the NBA, if you like basketball at all, how could you not enjoy Nash running the show, making great passes, hitting big shots, Stoudamire and Jason Richardson dunking, Jared Dudley hustling and making plays and on and on. It’s a fun team to watch and an Orlando v. Phoenix finals would be a 10 out of 10 on the enjoyability scale for me. I’d love to see LeBron do his thing, but outside of him, there aren’t any guys on that team that I enjoy watching play, so I don’t want to see them advance. As for Boston, I’ve had it up to here (touching the ceiling) with them, put them out to pasture, please. Orlando runs. Orlando shoots. Orlando is deep. Orlando is better than both Cleveland and Boston. Orlando is going to advance.

So, let’s go Utah, make L.A. work. The world NBA world deserves to see Phoenix in the Finals.